Minako Yoshida -- Soto wa Minna（外はみんな）

Well, it was pretty much as expected. Premier Ford announced today that everybody in Ontario except for the urban areas in the Golden Horseshoe including Toronto, that region hugging the western end of Lake Ontario, can start opening up the shops and restaurants as of this Friday. The GTA will have to wait at least another week to see if our infection rates decrease enough to warrant our turn at re-opening.

Going way back in the illustrious career of Minako Yoshida（吉田美奈子）to check out the first track in her debut album "Tobira no Fuyu"（扉の冬...The Door's Winter）released in September 1973. Despite the title and somewhat pensive expression on the 20-year-old Yoshida's face on the cover, "Soto wa Minna" (Everyone's Outside) has got oodles of summer warmth.

Yoshida wrote and composed all of the tracks and she's backed up by the band Caramel Mama（キャラメル・ママ）which would later get its name change to Tin Pan Alley. So, behind her in recording were former Happy End bandmates Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）and Shigeru Suzuki（鈴木茂）on bass/acoustic guitar and electric guitar/percussion respectively with Tatsuo Hayashi（林立夫）on drums and Masataka Matsutoya（松任谷正隆）on organ. Meanwhile, Yoshida herself would handle piano and percussion. However, I would love to know who was taking care of the splendid brass section...that is one reason that the warmth was in there.

With "Soto wa Minna", Yoshida's lyrics seem to talk about getting out there and seizing the day, a sentiment that I figure a lot of people would love to do at this time. There is mention about forests and trees in the song, but "Soto wa Minna" has an arrangement that makes me feel there is some New York City soul, presaging the musical direction that she would take as the decade went by. It's a short and sweet number but it makes for a fine introduction to "Tobira no Fuyu", and as I finish this, I'm already a number of tracks into the album. If at all possible, I will have to add this to the Yoshida collection.